Short Stories from Stories of Ourselves AS Level
The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
Gothic Tradition: An important example where terror and horror reveal the psychological states of characters and narrators.
Narrator's Descent: The narrator's gradual loss of rationality and descent into madness is depicted through her telling of the tale.
John as Voice of Reason: The husband, John, represents reason and rationality, opposing 'horror and superstition,' but he is unable to understand his wife.
Uncertainty about John's Concern: The story creates uncertainty about John's concern for his wife and her illness, suggesting potential oppression.
Forbidden Writing: The narrator is forbidden to write, implying that writing is seen as a manifestation of her illness. This raises questions about the repression of individuality and restriction of women's roles, common in Gothic texts.
Wallpaper as Entrapment: The pattern on the wallpaper entraps and restricts the woman within, leading the narrator to identify with her, declaring, 'I’ve got out at last… you can’t put me back!'
Wider Reading: Other short stories by Charlotte Perkins Gilman include When I Was a Witch, Turned, Making a Change, and If I Were a Man.
Comparisons: Compare with The Signalman by Charles Dickens, On Her Knees by Tim Winton, The Hollow of the Three Hills by Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Fall of the House of Usher by Edgar Allan Poe, The Lady in the Looking Glass by Virginia Woolf, and Sandpiper by Adhaf Soueif.
The Son’s Veto by Thomas Hardy
Hardy's Literary Context: Thomas Hardy is a writer of classic novels of the English Victorian era.
He stopped writing novels altogether after the criticism of Tess of the d’Urbervilles (1891) and Jude the Obscure (1895) for being too explicit in their treatment of personal and social themes.
Thereafter, he focused on writing poetry.
Sophy's Character: In The Son’s Veto, Sophy’s character is revealed through a series of telling moments in her life.
The story gradually reveals details to allow the reader to form an impression of her.
Narrative Perspective: The narrator initially writes from the perspective of a man viewing the woman’s immaculate hair from behind.
Dialogue and Rebuke: An exchange of dialogue between son and mother reveals the son rebuking the mother for her poor grammar with an impatient fastidiousness.
This sensitivity eventually leads to his veto over his mother’s wish to remarry.
Class Consciousness: The vignette of the public-school cricket match illustrates the class consciousness at the heart of the story.
Reader Response: How do readers respond to Hardy’s depiction of the boy who becomes the ‘young smooth-shaven priest’ at the end of the story?
Sympathy for the Mother: How does Hardy make readers feel sorry for the mother?
Wider Reading: Encourage students to read other short stories by Thomas Hardy, such as The Withered Arm and Tony Kytes, the Arch-Deceiver.
They might also explore novels like Far From the Madding Crowd and The Mayor of Casterbridge, and poems such as The Voice and The Darkling Thrush.
Comparisons: Compare with The Fly in the Ointment by V.S. Pritchett, The Village Saint by Bessie Head, and On Her Knees by Tim Winton.
Online Resources: Biographical and critical texts on Hardy can be found at: http://www.victorianweb.org/authors/hardy/index.html
The Door in the Wall by H.G. Wells
Wells's Style: Besides famous novels such as The War of the Worlds and The Time Machine, H.G. Wells wrote numerous short stories exploring fantasy and the improbable.
Truthfulness in Narratives: Wells creates a sense of truthfulness in his narratives.
A radio broadcast adaptation of The War of the Worlds in 1938 caused panic in New York, demonstrating this.
This is also seen in the narrator’s concern with the truth of the story in The Door in the Wall.
Narrative Tension: The narrator retells the story of someone else, who tells it with ‘such direct simplicity of conviction,’ creating tension throughout the story.
The story is ‘frankly incredible’ but assuredly ‘a true story.’
Paradisiacal Garden: The temporary childhood escape into the paradisiacal garden is evoked with nostalgic longing but remains inexplicable.
Ambiguous Ending: The character’s final death leaves questions for the reader – is it another inexplicable event or a solution to the mystery?
Publication and Popularity: H.G. Wells’ short story “The Door in the Wall” was first published in 1911 as part of a collection titled The Door in the Wall, and Other Stories.
Major Theme: The conflict between science and imagination is the major theme of the story, which was enormously popular when it first appeared.
Wells's Reputation: Today, Wells’ reputation rests almost entirely upon his science fiction novels, including
The Time Machine (1895),
The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896),
The Invisible Man (1897),
The War of the Worlds (1898).
Finest Short Story: “The Door in the Wall” is considered by readers and critics alike to be Wells’ finest short story.
Aesthetics vs. Science: “The Door in the Wall” examines the contrast between aesthetics and science and the difficulty of choosing between them, reflected in much of Wells’ writing.
Protagonist: The protagonist, Lionel Wallace, possesses a vivid imagination but goes into politics, where he is considered extremely rational.
Nostalgia: The story suggests both the magic and the danger of a nostalgia for a buried time.
Plot Summary:
Wallace, a politician, confides to his friend Redmond about a preoccupation dominating his life.
As a lonely child of five, he wandered into the streets of West Kensington in London and noticed a green door in a white wall.
He felt tempted to open it but feared his stern father’s anger.
Wallace's father is described as “a stern preoccupied lawyer, who gave him little attention and expected great things of him.” His mother was dead, and he was raised by a governess.
He enters an enchanted garden with bright colors, tame panthers, beautiful flowers, and shady trees.
He meets a fair girl who welcomes him and other children, playing games he can’t later remember.
A woman reads him a book that tells his own life story. When the book reaches the part where he finds the green door, the enchanted world vanishes, and he's back on the street.
He tells his father about the garden and is punished for lying, suppressing the memory but never forgetting it.
Throughout his life, he occasionally sees the door but always has an important commitment preventing him from opening it.
He tells Redmond he has seen the door three times in the past year, each time passing it by due to vital obligations.
He is now full of regrets and barely able to work.
Months later, he is found dead, having mistaken a door at a construction site for the magical door.
Alienation and Loneliness: The garden is a metaphor for Wallace’s alienation and loneliness.
His mother died when he was born, and his father was stern, forcing him to retreat into a private world of imagination.
He could only find love and attention through the door in the wall.
He tried to tell them, and my father gave me my first thrashing for telling lies. When afterwards I tried to tell my aunt, she punished me again for my wicked persistence. Then… everyone was forbidden to listen to me, to hear a word about it.”
Insanity:
Initially, Redmond is unsure whether to believe Wallace’s tale.
The reader is more willing to believe because it is filtered through Redmond’s sensible voice.
Wells did not aim to develop an insane character but to show the consequences of separating one's personality components.
Wallace views his childhood as real, unable to differentiate between real and imaginary.
He may seem insane, mistaking a door at a railway construction site for the magical door, but he is trying to return to when he was allowed to be himself.
Public vs. Private:
In public, Wallace is a successful Cabinet Minister, trusted and respected.
In private, he longs for the enchanted garden, unable to unite his public and private selves.
Redmond says “what a woman once said of him- a woman who had loved him greatly. ‘Suddenly,’ she said, ‘the interest goes out of him. He forgets you. He doesn’t care a rap for you- under his very nose.”
Point of View:
The story is told from Redmond’s perspective, allowing the reader to find out about Wallace’s demise but preventing knowledge of Wallace’s final thoughts.
Symbols:
Many of Wells’ symbols are dreamlike.
“There was,’ he said, ‘ a crimson Virginia creeper- all one bright uniform crimson, in a clear amber sunshine against a white wall. That came into the impression somehow… and there were horse- chestnut leaves upon the clean pavement outside the green door. They were blotched yellow and green, you know, not brown nor dirty, so that they must have been new fallen.”
The white wall is a feminine symbol.
The amber sunshine is a masculine symbol.
The green door symbolises fertility.
Metaphor:
The tale serves as a metaphor for Wallace’s alienation and loneliness.
Wallace spends his life longing to return to the enchanted garden, where he knew love and joy.
To Da-Duh, In Memoriam by Paule Marshall
Story Overview: The narrator remembers her visit from New York to her mother’s home country, Barbados, and the relationship formed between the young girl and her grandmother, Da-duh.
Central Conflict: The story hinges on a competition between the girl and the grandmother, representing youth vs. age, modernity vs. tradition, and New York vs. Barbados, culminating in the girl’s assertion of the height of the Empire State Building.
Tempered Triumph: The young girl’s triumph is tempered by the shadow of Da-duh’s death.
Themes:
Rivalry between grandmother and granddaughter.
Rural world versus the urban world.
Tradition versus modernity.
Age versus youth.
Cycles of time and the enduring nature of family.
Autobiographical Nature: Marshall notes the autobiographical nature of the piece, written many years after a childhood visit to her grandmother in Barbados.
Da-duh's Significance: Understanding Da-duh’s influence is an important tool for achieving critical understanding of Marshall’s body of work and her continuing themes.
Marshall's Description of Da-duh: As Marshall describes her grandmother in an introduction to the story published in 1983, “She’s an ancestor figure, symbolic for me of the long line of black women and men… who made my being possible, and whose spirit I believe continues to animate my life and work.”
Author Biography:
Born on April 9, 1929, in Brooklyn, New York, to Barbadian immigrants.
Early life suffused with Caribbean culture and traditions.
First visit to the Caribbean at age nine inspired her to write poetry.
Graduated from Brooklyn College in 1953 with a BA in English literature.
Worked as a researcher and journalist for the African-American magazine Our World from 1953 to 1956, traveling to Brazil and the Caribbean.
Started writing her first novel, the autobiographical Brown Girl, Brownstones (1959), while attending graduate school at Hunter College.
Themes in Brown Girl, Brownstones:
Importance of her relationship to her family in the Caribbean.
Dedicated the novel to her grandmother, who inspired her to write “To Da-duh, in Memoriam.”
Later Works:
Won a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1960, used to complete the book of novellas Soul Clap Hands and Sing (1961), expanding her Barbadian community to include other members of the African diaspora.
Worked for a Caribbean magazine, New World, and as a librarian for the New York Public Library.
Published The Chosen Place, The Timeless People in 1969.
Published Reena and Other Stories in 1983, which included “To Da-duh, in Memoriam.”
Civil Rights Movement: Involved in the civil rights movement during the 1960s, joining the American Youth for Democracy and Artists for Freedom.
Teaching and Later Publications:
Divided her time between New York and the West Indies during the 1970s.
Taught creative writing and literature at several colleges and universities.
Published the novel Praisesong for the Widow in 1983, sharing the theme of the search for identity with Brown Girl, Brownstones.
Published the novel Daughters in 1991.
Won a MacArthur Fellowship in 1992.
Retired from teaching at Virginia Commonwealth University to devote herself full-time to writing.
Plot Summary:
The story opens in 1937 as the nine-year-old narrator arrives in Bridgetown, Barbados, with her mother and sister.
The narrator has never met her grandmother, Da-duh, before.
Da-duh examines her grandchildren, calling the narrator “fierce.”
Da-duh shows the narrator the land covered with fruit orchards and sugar cane.
The narrator describes snow to impress Da-duh and performs popular dances and songs.
For the remainder of the visit, the narrator spends most of her time with her grandmother, describing New York and its modern appliances.
The narrator tells Da-duh she beats up white girls in New York.
Da-duh takes her granddaughter to see a very tall palm tree, asking if they have anything as tall in New York.
The narrator tells her about the Empire State Building.
Da-duh gets angry, accusing her granddaughter of lying.
Da-duh doesn’t feel well, and the visit becomes dispirited.
The narrator mails a postcard of the Empire State Building after returning to Brooklyn.
Da-duh dies shortly after the family left.
Riots in Bridgetown occurred, and British planes flew over the island.
Da-duh stayed in the house and watched the planes swoop down, dying in her chair by the window.
As an adult, the narrator does penance for how she treated her grandmother, living in a downtown loft in New York and painting pictures of the sugar cane.
Characters:
Da-Duh: The narrator’s eighty-year-old grandmother, confident and proud of her Barbadian lifestyle.
Narrator: A strong-willed, unique child who visits Barbados and meets Da-duh for the first time.
Themes:
Rivalry: Aging Barbadian grandmother versus her youthful American granddaughter.
Time: Da-duh and the narrator represent the span of time and its cyclical nature.
Rural and Urban Worlds: Grandmother and granddaughter participate in a rivalry to prove that her world is superior.
Slavery and Colonization: Elements in “To Da-duh, in Memoriam” reflect this heritage.
Style:
Point of View: Written from the first-person point of view, through the child narrator’s eyes.
My Greatest Ambition by Morris Lurie
Author Background: Morris Lurie is an Australian writer of comic prose fiction and plays.
Narrator's Ambition: The narrator (surname Lurie) wants to be a comic-strip artist.
Perspective on Others: He views fellow pupils wanting to become farmers, chemists, or doctors as dreamers and romantics.
Father-Son Relationship: The narrator’s mocking father sees his son as a dreamer.
Trip to Boy Magazine: The trip to the offices of Boy Magazine is full of comic touches, like the boy’s short trousers, permanent smile, and the awkwardness when the men realize the comic-strip artist is a schoolboy.
Final Paragraph's Effectiveness: The story's final paragraph and the narrator’s observation are important: 'The only thing that was ever real to me I had ‘grown out of’. I had become, like everyone else, a dreamer.’
Wider Reading: Try reading his 1978 novel Flying Home.
Comparisons: Compare with Sredni Vashtar by Saki (Hector Hugh Munro), The Enemy by V.S. Naipaul, Secrets by Bernard MacLaverty, and The Taste of Watermelon by Borden Deal.
The Prison by Bernard Malamud
Plot Summary:
Tommy Castelli runs a candy store with his wife, Rosa; he feels trapped at age 29 and reflects on past mistakes.
He was more rebellious and carefree, planning to escape his neighborhood, but marriage to Rosa kept him there.
He tried running away to Texas but returned after three months, marrying Rosa and running the store.
A girl steals candy bars, prompting Tommy to reflect on his past.
He tries indirect methods to discourage her, like cleaning out the candy and leaving notes.
The girl ignores Tommy's attempts and continues to take candy.
Tommy plans to leave a note in a chocolate bar warning her to stop stealing.
The girl doesn't show up after the note is left, leaving Tommy disappointed and reflecting further on his life.
Rosa catches the girl stealing, and Tommy intervenes, arguing with his wife and hitting her.
The girl's mother arrives, punishes her, and drags her away; the girl defiantly sticks out her tongue at Tommy as she leaves.
Setting:
The story is set in a small, gloomy candy store on Prince Street in the Village, New York City, characterized by poverty.
The setting mirrors Tommy's feelings of being trapped.
The store becomes a metaphor for the characters' internal prisons, made up of past mistakes, missed opportunities, and the grind of daily life.
Character List:
Tommy Castelli (Tony): A 29-year-old man trapped in a life he never wanted.
Rosa: Tommy's wife, who helps run the candy store; she is practical, vigilant, and distrustful.
The Girl: An unnamed ten-year-old girl from the neighborhood who steals candy bars.
The Girl's Mother: A stern, rock-faced woman who arranges after-school care for small kids.
Uncle Dom: A relative of Tommy's who used to take him crabbing; he represents a happier time in Tommy's life.